It’s our hope, too, that people in the minority will draw some energy and strength from our existence.

The way we think is that everything that we do, and our existence itself, is contributing to the hope for leaving this xenophobia, these negative things, behind. “There’s a light side there’s always going to be a dark side.

“Now, of course, there is no utopia,” RM continues. The nation has long been deeply invested in its outsize cultural success beyond its borders, known as the Korean Wave. “We are outliers,” says RM, “and we came into the American music market and enjoyed this incredible success.” In 2020, seven years into their career, BTS’ first English-language single, the irresistible “Dynamite,” hit Number One, an achievement so singular it prompted a congratulatory statement from South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in. What RM is currently pondering, however, is how all of it contrasts with a darker landscape all around them, particularly the horrifying recent wave of anti-Asian violence and discrimination across a global diaspora. We’re talking about utopian and dystopian futures, about how the boundary-smashing, hegemony-overturning global success of his group, the wildly talented seven-member South Korean juggernaut BTS, feels like a glimpse of a new and better world, of an interconnected 21st century actually living up to its promise.īTS’ downright magical levels of charisma, their genre-defying, sleek-but-personal music, even their casually nontoxic, skin-care-intensive brand of masculinity - every bit of it feels like a visitation from some brighter, more hopeful timeline. This is a very serious and deep question,” says RM, the 26-year-old leader of the world’s biggest band.

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